Up Front: The Classics Are Rubbish Too
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Catch 22 took me six months to read the first time I read it (and I usually mow through a book in a weekend) and I hated it. Didn't get it.
I was 13.
Then I reread it when I was 16. Same deal.
Then when I was 20 I picked it up and couldn't put it down. Read it in one night and my god. What a book!
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I love Heyer in general, but her pre-Regency stuff (there's a William the Conqueror one, shudder) leaves me cold.
Hell yes, and the sad thing is that My Lord John (which was unfinished when she died and published posthumously) is kind of the her equivalent of Peter Jackson's King Kong. It was the project closest to her heart, but for all kinds of reason she just couldn't get it to work. The one great injustice of those who dismiss Heyer as a purveyor of "Regency romances" is that it doesn't acknowledge she did a hell of a lot of research and, more importantly, worked it into the novels without the fatal Basil Exposition dialogue or raw info-dumps that screw far too many historical novels for me.
Not that I've got anything against romance -- especially when, at their best, a Heyer heroine is several orders of magnitude brighter than any man in view. :)
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Then when I was 20 I picked it up and couldn't put it down. Read it in one night and my god. What a book!
I you got that right. Heller got so tired of asking how come he never wrote anything that good again, that once he replied that neither has anybody else.
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Pride and Extreme Prejudice
Anyone interested in seeing what this would look like should hunt down the Monty Python/Sam Peckinpah/Salad Days sketch. It's probably on youtube but I can't access it.
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__ Anything by Jane Austen.__
right on.
the films are worse. a bunch of foofy tosh.
Philistines.
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It is this simple: you cannot grow bananas in London, Jaguar did not make a car like that before the end of the war and Pynchon does not understand the English class system.
And any loser could paint like Mondrian.
It is our weakness for narrative and realism that creates churlish readers and makes most novels dull.
Anyone who feels like a failure because they can't finish Gravity's Rainbow is lacking perspective.
But anyone who feels Gravity's Rainbow is a failure because they can't finish it is lacking more.
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so tired of asking
So tired of being asked, obviously.
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Philistines.
LOL. (i knew that would draw you out)
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Philistines.
LOL. (i knew that would draw you out)
I simply wasn't going to sink to acknowledging your attempts at baiting.
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(i knew that would draw you out)
I raced back home between tutes, to cook some chocolate sponge rolls for the vegetarians who are coming over for dinner tonight, and said to myself that I would only look at PAS, I wouldn't post because I didn't have time....
I plead extreme provocation.
I'm going back to my much more reasonable first year ethics students now.
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And my all time favourite author at this point in time is Coetzee: Disgrace is the best
I did not enjoy that book at all. It is entirely possible that I just didn't get it, but the theme seemed to be 'woman brutally raped as symbolic revenge for apartheid', and I was all squicked. Like, OK, awesome, she's your sacrificial Jesus figure or whatever, but don't expect me to find it moving.
Also, Austen rules. A pox on you naysayers.
Also (2): I hardly read anything worth a damn any more. I really need to win Lotto and stop working so I can concentrate on something worthy.
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<che apologies for trollish behaviour, but does not back away from seeking acknowledgement that austen's priggish characters are, at best, foofy>
a shiriken death to d'arcy.
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a shiriken death to d'arcy
Tricky, when in my head he's standing on the lakeshore, his wet white shirt plastered to his torso, holding an AK-47 and screaming 'yippie-ki-ay motherfucker'. That's what you people have done to my psyche.
However. You'll get no traction dissing P&P, Tibby, but I'll give you Persuasion and Mansfield Park. Both main characters make me desperately want to slap them until they grow a freaking spine.
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I really need to win Lotto and stop working so I can concentrate on something worthy
Amen
One of the problems with this thread is now my Must Read pile (aka the spare room) is growing far too large, same with the Must Reread pile (aka the downstairs library), while only a few are falling into the Don't Read pileDamn you Emma Hart
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If his name was actually apostrophised (is that a word?), then you'd have some evidence of foofiness. Snerk.
Also, I don't understand this accusation of priggishness. In which universe would you not be a tad upset if your 15-year-old daughter/sister eloped with a wrong-un and spent several weeks in London gettin' busy, in a time with no female career prospects and no reliable contraception? They were trying to be *sensible*, not priggish. In sum: harumph.
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I really need to win Lotto and stop working so I can concentrate on something worthy
1. walk into your living room.
2. pick up the TV.
3. uplug it and carry it out the door to the garden.
4. hit it will a shovel until it is broken.
5. return indoors, put feet up, and read harry potter. (it is after all an entry-level drug).
6. yell, yippee-ki-ay motherfcuker, for effect.
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return indoors, put feet up, and read harry potter. (it is after all an entry-level drug).
Confession time. I've just read all 7 Harry Potters, in about 3 weeks. I'd resisted them before, because,w ell, I like to be contrary (see also: refuses to buy IPod.)
I'm now having trouble returning to anything worthy. I actually put down Plumb last night, and started to re-read The Order of the Phoenix.
Che? Help. But you better leave Mr Darcy alone.
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Emma, this may be the first time in my life I have ever disagreed with you (and it may well be the last), but I love Anne Elliot and think Persuasion is one of the best of Austen's novels. So much more fragile and regretful...
Fanny Price can get knotted, though. Wafting about yearning for your first cousin and getting all horrified by amateur theatrics? Meh. (Che, I'll give you that one.)
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(see also: refuses to buy IPod.)
Me too. The only apple product I've ever bought is cider.
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I'm with Danielle on the great worth of Persuasion and Anne Elliot, but Emma, Danielle - don't you know the basic rule of Austen netiquette? Don't start a flame war about Fanny Price.
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1. walk into your living room.
2. pick up the TV.
3. uplug it and carry it out the door to the garden.
4. hit it with a shovel until it is broken.Erm. You're talking to a person who squealed with excitement when she discovered that the Vibe channel was going to show Judge Joe Brown every weekday, because *I have a favourite judge show*. I think winning Lotto is more likely.
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[Piers Anthony's] Xanth series is a little better,
at least, in small doses. I found Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series a more satisfying read, because there he's trying to map out his personal philosophy, rather than labouring to put a bad pun in every paragraph as in Xanth. It's still uneven, though. My favourites were the first (__Riding a Pale Horse__) and last (__And Eternity__) -- but Being a Green Mother and__For Love of Evil__, in particular, are patchy, and if you're ploughing through all seven, there's quite a lot of unnecessary repetition of the plotlines, especially from those two books. It's like he sold the publisher on the idea that there should be one book for each of the seven main characters, and then was contractually obligated to churn out all seven to fit that structure ... but couldn't quite convince himself of the necessity.
But, hey, if you want fantasy series for that difficult age group, how about Patricia Wrightson's Wirrin arc (which begins with The Nargun and the Stars, and makes prominent use of characters from Aboriginal mythology)?
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Tricky, when in my head he's standing on the lakeshore, his wet white shirt plastered to his torso, holding an AK-4
Darcy. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Shaken & stirred.
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Me too. The only apple product I've ever bought is cider.
Iscrumpy.
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Patricia Wrightson's Wirrin arc (which begins with The Nargun and the Stars, and makes prominent use of characters from Aboriginal mythology)?
!!!!!
you legend.
i have been trying to find the name of that series for years.
best tweenie books *ever*.
that said, i'll not read them again. i found a copy of the half-men of o in a bookstore and reread it, only to be extremely disappointed at its simplicity.
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